Footage of youths beating up foreign laborer goes viral

Disturbing footage allegedly showing a gang of young students from Taoyuan County beating a foreign worker to the ground has been circulating since Wednesday, sparking an outcry among the nation’s Netizens, with many threatening to launch an online manhunt to expose the perpetrators.

The 28-second video clip shows a number of youths wearing high-school uniforms gathered in an underpass, talking. After what appears to be an order issued by one of the youths, the others move to both sides of the tunnel before launching a vicious attack on a foreign worker, punching and kicking him.

The defenseless worker is shown being knocked to the ground, where he attempts to shield his head with his hands as the mob repeatedly kicks him.

After the clip went viral, incensed Netizens denounced the beating and called for a cyber-manhunt to identify the alleged attackers.

The clip was pulled from the video-sharing Web site YouTube at about 7pm on Wednesday, because of violations of the site’s terms of use.

Based on the uniforms the students were wearing, some Netizens alleged that the attackers were probably from the Daxing High School, a private high school in Taoyuan County.

After watching the footage, the school’s General Affairs chief, surnamed Chang (張), said that the clip did seem to implicate the school, but that based on the color of the uniforms the youths were more likely to be graduates as the school had changed the color of its uniform in June last year.

He said he would refer the footage to the director of Students Affairs to determine how the issue should be handled.

Netizens also said they had pinpointed the likely location of the assault: an underground passage next to Taoyuan City railway station. However, local police rejected the hypothesis after inspecting the scene, as they found the width of the passage did not match the one in the video.

Other suggested locations were the two underpasses next to the railway station in Jhongli City (中壢), Taoyuan County.

Jhongli Police Station deputy director Kuang Meng-te (鄺孟德) said that they had not received any reports of a physical assault against foreign workers recently, but that the investigation was ongoing.